


don’t

by mickeymickeymick



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, TW- Suicide Attempt, TW- self harm, im sorry, plot filler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 18:07:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12658713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mickeymickeymick/pseuds/mickeymickeymick
Summary: a filler from right after ian leaves for the army to when mandy tells him to go find him





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS SO SAD IM SO SORRY:((((

“really? that’s all you’re gonna say to him? you’re a fucking pussy.”

mickey wanted to respond. he wanted to defend himself. he wanted to tell mandy that she didn’t know shit about him and ian. that it wasn’t her place and that she should stay the fuck out of it. but he couldn’t. because she was right. all of the words he couldn’t say balled up in the back of his throat and he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. he was a fucking pussy. he could have made him stay. he could have made it better. it probably wouldn’t take much. but it’s too late now and the only person he has ever loved and has ever made him happy (other than mandy) is gone. his eyes were stinging and his chest was tight and he decided that he couldnt deal with feeling like this. he decided to solve this problem the only way he knows how– by drinking and drinking until he couldn’t remember his own name. he took a shaky breath and walked over to the cabinet with the booze in the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of vodka. and also the jack. and the rum. he immediately screwed the cap off of the vodka and started chugging as he walked back to his room. he stopped short at the door, though, because when he looked at his bed all he could see was ian. ian when he came to get the gun back for kash and they fucked for the first time. ian when he slept over because he was in the group home and they slept in the same bed and sort of cuddled. ian when he took mickey home after he got shot and cared for him like nobody else ever had. ian. fucking ian. he continued chugging the rest of the vodka as he began letting out sobs, not being able to hold them in anymore. he finished the vodka and threw the bottle against the back wall and mickey sobbed harder as it shattered. he went to the bathroom because all he could see was ian everywhere in his fucking house and maybe the bathroom would be an easier place to be. he opened the jack and chugged, making his way to the tub. his mind ran wild with could-have and should-have beens. how he could have gotten ian to stay. he would have kissed him hard and told him he loved him and begged him to run away with him. they could have just left, ran away from all the bullshit in their lives and gone to live in a shitty apartment in the middle of nowhere. maybe mickey would use a fake name in a couple years and marry ian. he would get ian a dog because he asks so much and mickey would end up being the only one cleaning up after the fucker but it wouldn’t matter because he would do anything for the love of his life. but it was too late. ian was gone. mickey let out another sob and decided that he couldn’t deal with feeling like this for one more second, so he opened the cabinet and got a handful of some kind of pills. he took them all at once and washed it down with the rest of the jack. at this point, mickey was so drunk he could barely see so he dropped the empty bottle on the floor and threw himself into the bathtub while opening his last bottle. he cried and drank and was passed out within minutes. 

mandy figured that she should leave mickey alone. she heard the bottle shatter and she heard him sob harder than she ever heard anyone sob, but she kept her concern to herself and tried to stay away from him. mandy cried herself to sleep that night too, because her best friend was gone and she had no idea where her brother was. that night, the milkovich household was full of pain and sorrow and missing ian more than anyone should miss anything.


	2. Chapter 2

mandy woke up at noon, and immediately felt a pit in her stomach. the house was silent. this house was never silent. mickey was never silent. she hurriedly stood up and ran to his room, but he wasnt there. she looked all over the house and saw no signs that mickey was there or had been there today. she held back her tears and opened the bathroom door. she looked into the tub and saw her brother passed out, covered in his own vomit, and clutching a half empty bottle. mandy took a shaky breath and slowly kneeled down to his level and put her hand next to his nose to make sure he wasn’t dead. after what felt like an eternity, she felt a weak breath and sighed in relief. she sat there waiting for him to wake up, because she could tell that he had alcohol poisoning and had probably done a shit ton of coke or something. eventually, he opened his eyes and saw mandy sitting there.   
“the fuck are you doing?” he grunted.   
“making sure you aren’t dead, asswipe.” mandy bit back. mickey noticed the bottle in his hand and finished it but immediately pushed mandy out of the way to vomit in the toilet. mandy tentatively put a hand on mickeys back, but he shook her off and she decided to give him some privacy. 

mornings like those became relatively common. mickey stopped leaving the house. he never spoke a word to svetlana and only spoke to mandy to tell her to fuck off and that he was fine but mandy had a gut feeling that mickey really really wasn’t. at all.


	3. Chapter 3

mickey was numb. emotionally and physically. he can’t remember the last time he was sober. not that it mattered to him because nothing mattered to him. among the numbness, however, was something more than sadness. it was a sadness that never wavered and that added hundreds of pounds to his heart. eventually, that sadness turned into a deep hatred. at first mickey thought he hated ian, but one night, as he did his fifth line of coke, he realized that he didn’t hate ian at all. the person he hated was himself. he hated himself for hurting ian all those times and for inviting ian into his fucked up life and for letting ian get hit by fucking terry and for hitting him himself. he hated himself for the fact that ian could be dead or walking around with an arm shot off or missing one of his beautiful eyes because mickey couldn’t just fucking speak. but he probably wouldn’t have been able to stop him anyway. he was nothing, ian could do infinitely better than mickey and be probably never loved him. what was there to love? 

mickey never really ate breakfast anymore because he usually puked until lunch, and slowly but surely he stopped eating lunch too. within a few months, all he ate in the day was an apple or a bag of chips or something insignificant because food was expensive and he didnt deserve it. he didnt deserve shit, especially ian. he stole all of his alcohol and whatever pills or coke he could get, and those pills and coke and booze was the only way he could somewhat bear living with himself anymore. he only showed when mandy made him and his days turned into sleep, non-sobriety, punching the walls, and nothing else.


	4. Chapter 4

months passed. mandy almost became desensitized to the passing out and the puking, because mandy knew (or hoped at least) that mickey wouldn’t actually kill himself intentionally or unintentionally. just to be sure, she tried her best to dilute his alcohol and fake out his coke or replace his pills so that he wouldn’t overdose. but mostly, jt was ok. that sense of security faded over time, however. it became hard for her to watch mickey’s health deteriorate from a physical standpoint. his eyes were sunken in and his cheeks were hollow and he only wore sweatshirts and sweatpants but all of them used to fit him nicely and now they are baggy and almost falling off. his hands shook sometimes when he would lift something. but mandy had seen a lot of shit in her lifetime and she could handle this. that was, until, she saw the little drops of blood on mickey’s sheets. it was only a few, but the next day it was a few more and it kept building up until his entire bed was riddled with little reddish brown drops and smears. mandy did her best to not ask and avoided mickey more than she already was until one day when he went to get booze and she caved. the least she could do was wash his sheets. she walked into his room and pulled the sheets off of the mattress and as she walked to the other side of the bed she saw something shiny on the ground. she looked down to see the shattered pieces of the bottle of vodka that mickey had left there for what was now months. about half the shards of glass were covered in blood. mandy immediately broke into sobs. it was the first time she had cried since ian first left, and this time, she couldn’t pull herself together. she sat there on the floor of her big brother’s room staring at his blood and his pain and felt helpless. an eternity later, mandy heard the door open and immediately shut her feelings off and picked the sheets back up, walking out of the room casually.   
“youre welcome, asshole. these probably haven’t been washed in months.” mandy said, her voice hiding any sign of her pain. she rushed away from mickey, avoiding eye contact. mickey did catch a glance of her face, though. she must have been crying for hours. that knife-like sensation in his heart was the first thing he’d felt in months, and he hated it. he hated himself. all he did was hurt everyone he loved. he loved ian and he always would. but, he thought, ian would never love him back. so the only solution to this issue was, you guessed it– booze and pills. 

mandy brought his sheets back quietly, but as she walked into mickeys room, she saw him sitting on the other side of the bed on the floor. mandy wanted to drop everything and run to him and stop him. but it wasn’t her place to control him like that so she just let him be. she couldn’t seem to move her feet, though. she couldn’t see much, but she heard him grab a piece of glass off the floor and pull up his sleeves. tears began to pour out of her eyes as she heard her brother exhale and groan in pain. after a minute, he let his head rest back onto the mattress. as he began to cry, he picked his head back up and took a breath. this time, the sharp breath and the almost scream was louder than before and she couldn’t just stand there anymore.   
“mickey, fucking STOP!” she screamed, running to him. he said nothing. he just sat there bleeding from the 2 cuts that were way deeper than the rest. mandy stood there frozen as she saw her brother’s arms. jagged cuts ran horizontally from the bases of his hands up to almost the creases of his elbows. its looked like raw meat. but on top of all of those there was one long deep gash going vertically from his wrist all the way up on each arm and blood was spewing out of them like a hose. his face was blank and his eyes drooped and his head slowly dropped to his chest.


	5. Chapter 5

“MICKEY!” mandy screamed as she tried to pick his head up. “WAKE THE FUCK UP!” she sobbed. she pulled out her phone and dialed 911 and put it on speaker as she stood up to grab 2 t-shirts to try and stop the bleeding. she told the paramedics her address and that her brother was bleeding out as calmly as she could, but she was pretty sure that she was screaming. the paramedics said they were on their way and hung up as mandy kept trying to stop the bleeding. but she couldn’t stop it. there was so much blood. it was all over him and her and the shirts weren’t doing anything and she sat by him and held his cold face in her hands as she sobbed and waited for the ambulance to arrive. it took an eternity for them to get there and how could they do that? her brother was dying and they couldn’t bother to hurry the fuck up and save him. they had to save him. mandy barely remembered the rest, a blur of emts and blood and lights and sirens later, mandy was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital with her head between her legs still sobbing. a doctor walked over to her and she stood up.   
“you’re here for mikhailo milkovich?” the doctor asked, in what seemed like slow motion.   
“y-yes.” mandy choked out.   
“he lost a lot of blood and he had also overdosed on opiods, as well as alcohol poisoning. it’s a miracle that he’s still alive. we pumped his stomach for the alcohol poisoning and gave him some medication through and i.v. to counteract the overdose, and now he is stable but sedated. would you like to see him?” she asked politely.   
mandy just nodded and followed the doctor. she stopped short in the doorway after catching a glance of her brother. his face was white and his eyes were sunken and purple and he looked dead. his arms were stitched and bandaged and he had an i.v. in one arm. he looked dead. really dead. but he wasn’t. she walked toward him and put a hand on his cheek. his face was so cold and fragile. she hated seeing him like this. this wasn’t him anymore. this wasn’t the strong, tough, fearless, badass big brother she knew. she couldn’t believe her eyes and she couldn’t believe he had done this to himself. she wished she had said something earlier. after that first morning. what kind of sister was she? how could she let him do this to himself? as mandy grew angrier and angrier at herself, mickey opened his eyes.   
“why the fuck didn’t you let me die?” mickey croaked out. mandy looked at him and, in a spiral of anger replied, “why didn’t i let you die? why didn’t i fucking let you die? you can’t be fucking serious you asshole. i have said nothing over how ever many fucking months its been because i thought you would fucking get over it but you clearly can’t handle your shit mickey.” she was yelling now. “i thought you died, mickey. not just today. i check on you every morning to make sure you were breathing. i tried to replace your coke with baby laxatives and i watered down your booze. i put weight gain pills in your other pills so that you wouldn’t keep losing weight. im not letting you fucking die.” she was crying and she wanted to slap him but she thought she might break him if she did. mickey looked at her as his eyes teared up, and he couldn’t wipe them away or hide his face because his arms were restrained. “‘m sorry, mands.” he choked out. she soften again and kissed his head. mickey winced a little, but still appreciated the affection.   
“go home, im good here. thanks.” mickey said weakly. mandy looked at him to make sure he wasn’t lying, but she was exhausted so she nodded and left.


	6. Chapter 6

mickey heard a knock on the door but before he could tell whoever that was to fuck off, an annoying-looking doctor walked in and closed the door behind her, walking over to him.   
“hi, mikhailo, i’m dr. stevens.”   
“it’s mickey.” he avoided eye contact.   
“pardon me, mickey. i have a few questions to ask you, if that’s okay. they might be pretty tough to answer, so feel free to take as much time as you need.”   
“whatever.”  
“i’ll start off easy, how long have you been using cocaine and opiods?”  
“fuck if i know.” mickey was bitter.   
“was there a time that you can remember your use increasing?”  
“‘bout 6 months ago.” extremely bitter.   
“was that the same time you began to self harm?”  
“yeah.” mickey wanted nothing more than to get up and leave, but he couldn’t.   
“and did something happen to spark that, perhaps a family issue or a breakup?”  
fuck.   
“yeah.”  
“okay, which one?” she was way too fucking nice. it was annoying.   
“both.”  
“would you care to elaborate?”  
mickey considered saying nothing, but quickly realized that he would be put in the psych ward if he didn’t give this bitch answers. he had nothing left to lose anyway.   
“started fuckin someone a couple years back, we had a thing going when i wasn’t in juvie. we were at my house and my dad came in, caught us fucking, and pistol whipped us. he called some pimp and hired a handwhore to come fuck me, she got pregnant, my dad made me marry her. then he left to go to the fucking army–“  
“he, your father?” the doctor asked. she was clearly extremely confused.   
mickey looked up at her for the first time. he was going to lie, but again, he had nothing left to lose.   
“ian.” his eyes threatened to tear up as he said his name for the first time in many months. “ian.” he whispered.   
here eyes widened. suddenly she understood the story. she looked at him with a new kind of sympathy, the real kind.   
“can i tell you something, mickey?” she asked. mickey just raised his eyebrows. she pulled up her sleeve to reveal a huge scar and small chunk of skin missing. “my wife and i got shot on our wedding day.” mickey was unimpressed.   
“just cause you’re a dyke doesn’t fuckin mean im gonna talk.” mickey said coldly.   
“alright, listen, kid. if you don’t want nice, i can fucking do not nice. you can either start talking or i can shove you in the psych ward for 90 days. ok?” she was suddenly badass and sort of respectable. mickey grunted. she looked at him, waiting.   
“jesus, fine. when i was 16 or some shit ian and i met when my sister mandy tried to get with him but he pushed her off and she asked me to kill him so i went after him. I never got to him so i kept robbing the convenient store that he worked up and fucking over his boss named kash who he was fucking even though he was like 30 and married. i stole kash’s gun And Ian came to my house to try and get it and we fought and then ended up fucking. we kept fucking in the storeroom of the convenience store till i went to juvie for robbing the place. he kept on fucking old guys even when i was out of juvie. then ians dad walked in on us and i went to kill him but i clocked a pig instead and went back to juvie. got out, ian and i kept going, then he got booted and stuck in a halfway house so i told him he could crash at my place. we were fucking in the morning and my asshole of a father walked in on us and beat the shit out of us. he pointed a gun at us and called in svetlana to fuck the gay outta me. she got knocked up and my dad told me he’d kill ian if i didn’t marry her. so i did. and ian was in rotc so he got a fake id and came over to tell me he was shippin out for 4 fucking years. i couldn’t say anything to get him to stay so he left. booze and coke and shit was the only way i could forget him. didn’t fuckin work and i got tired of missin him.” mickey didn’t even realize he was crying. he had never said that many words in a row in his life.   
“mickey, you’re almost 19. you’ve been with this guy for three years?”  
“guess so.”  
“tell me about him.”  
“the fuck do you wanna know?”  
“what was he like?”  
“redhead. tall as a motherfucker. tough. brave.” she just looked at him, wanting more. “uh, he fuckin, uh, was kind of a pussy.”  
“how so?”  
“liked to fuckin cuddle. and fuckin kiss me like a fuckin fag. he cared too much about everything. about me. till he didn’t.” mickey was in a trance-like state of sadness and recollection. the two talked for almost an hour about ian and svetlana and mandy and more about ian.


	7. Chapter 7

the next morning, mickey heard a knock on the door. he again didn’t respond. dr. stevens walked in with a tray of shitty hospital breakfast.   
“the nurse was gonna bring you this but i wanted to talk to you more.” she said, not cheerily but in a comfortable mickey-like tone.   
“bout what?”  
“bout your cuts.” she said, sternly.   
“jesus christ. really?” mickey didn’t see it as a big deal and he certainly didn’t want to talk about it.   
“yes, really. because i still haven’t decided if i feel comfortable sending you home.”  
“what about it?”  
“when did you start? was it right after ian left?”   
“no, bout a month after.”  
“do you remember what was going through your head that prompted you to do it the first time?”  
“was trying to off myself. but i wasn’t high enough and it hurt so i took some more pills and fell asleaep before i could get back to it.”  
“and is that what happened the other times?”  
“at the beginning yeah, but it just sorta became habit and, i dont fuckin know, felt like i deserved it or some shit.”  
“you thought you deserved it?” mickey said nothing. “mickey, you don’t deserve pain. physical or otherwise. ian leaving was not your fault.”  
“course it was. if i fuckin told him to that and that... that i...” mickey’s voice fizzled out.   
“that you loved him?” mickey nodded softly. he did love ian. he loved ian with everything he had and every fiber of his being ached for ian’s happiness. mickey would do anything or give anything to ian. he would cut open his chest and give ian his heart if it might make him happy. ian was mickeys best friend and the love of his life and the best thing that had ever or will ever happen to him.   
“he would have stayed.” mickey said, voice breaking.  
“mickey, you and i both know that ian wasn’t safe here. your dad was going to kill him. and he was going to kill you. ian left for you. for your safety.” dr. stevens put a hand on mickeys shoulder as he cried.   
“he didnt deserve this shit. he deserves to be fuckin happy and as faggy as he wants and not to have to hide. hes too good for me. hell never come back.” mickey said through sobs.   
“hes going to come back, mickey. i know it. i could try to help you properly cope with heartbreak but i just know that hes gonna come back.   
“god, i really fuckin hope you’re right.”


	8. Chapter 8

mickey was released from the hospital a few days later. he got home, got clean, and stopped cutting. he was doing okay. it was still awful living without ian, but somehow he had a glimmer of hope that took him through the day the way the drugs used to. 

 

 

mandy wasn’t going to tell him. he had just gotten better and she wasn’t going to throw a wrench in it but ian was her best friend too. so, she barged into the bathroom and told him to go find his boyfriend. and he did. the rest is history.


End file.
